Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and US Secretary of State John Kerry met in New York to discuss ways of resolving the standoff about Iran's nuclear program. This was the first official meeting between Iran's foreign minister and his American counterpart in 34 years. While there has been much media hype about the meetings between officials of the two countries, it is yet to be seen whether any breakthrough will occur.
For the first time in 34 years, top officials from Iran will meet the Americans under the umbrella of the P5+1 talks over Iran's nuclear program. Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif will meet US Secretary of State John Kerry in New York. Will this meeting lead to any meaningful progress on the nuclear issue? We will see after the meeting that is scheduled to begin at 4 pm.
American officials lack even basic table manners for talks. While offering to talk to the Islamic Republic, they slap additional illegal sanctions. The revolutionary leadership in Iran has made clear there will be no talks until the Americans improve their manners.
Western governments have strange ways of dealing with others. They start with the claim that they represent the will of the international community.
Hopes aroused for a mutually acceptable approach to breaking the deadlock in Iran-P5+1 talks in Baghdad on May 23 and 24 were dashed because of Western duplicity.
The latest round of talks between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany (P5+1) held in Istanbul on April 14 ended with all sides proclaiming success.
In recent weeks, propaganda against Iran’s nuclear program has gone hysterical, pushed no doubt by the Zionist warmongers that are prepared to fight to the last American. Amid US-Zionist threats to attack Iran to prevent it from “acquiring” nuclear weapons — using nuclear missiles, no less — war psychosis has gripped much of the Western world and its Arabian clients!
Weeks before the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report was released on November 8, Western media outlets had already worked themselves into frenzy, drum-beating about how Iran would be found in “violation” of its nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) obligations by secretly diverting material to make the bomb.
Professor Shahram Amiri’s kidnapping ordeal finally ended on July 12 when he escaped from his American captors in Virginia and took refuge in the Iranian Interest Section at the Pakistan Embassy in Washington, DC. Kidnapped by CIA agents working in tandem with Saudi intelligence.
Intense debate has erupted in Washington about why sixteen US intelligence agencies unanimously endorsed the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) report on December 3 relating to Iran’s nuclear programme, which has openly contradicted (and therefore embarrassed) US president George Bush. For years Bush has accused Iran of working on building a “nuclear bomb”, despite vigorous denials from Tehran. The NIE report has confirmed what Iran had been saying all along: that its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes and that its enrichment activities comply fully with its Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) rights and obligations.
Like a spoiled child that throws a tantrum when it cannot get what it wants, the US government is threatening to place the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) of Iran on the list of “terrorist” organizations unless the UN Security Council agrees to tougher sanctions against Tehran. The idea is so preposterous that even Washington’s friends have baulked. How can an important arm of government be described as a “terrorist” organization, they ask incredulously.
While members of the UN Security Council were preparing to meet in London on February 26 to discuss what further steps they could take against Iran after the expiry of the UN’s illegal demand for Iran to suspend uranium enrichment, Western diplomats in Vienna revealed on February 22 that US intelligence about Iran’s nuclear facilities had turned out to be false.
Muslims struggling for peace and justice will continue to face many challenges, but perhaps none more difficult than the propaganda against them in the West. Even as the lies spun by the Western media, in cooperation with their governments, about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in 2002-2003 have been exposed, more lies are churned out against Iran
In what may be one of the UN’s most hypocritical moves ever, the Security Council imposed nonmilitary sanctions on Iran on December 23 for its peaceful nuclear-power programme. That the resolution went through several drafts over the course of two months reflected deep divisions among Council members, but its final passage reconfirmed that the UN does not live up to its high-sounding principles or care about the rights of others
Four days after Iran sent a 21-page response to the Security Council about its nuclear programme, President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad inaugurated a heavy-water plant at Arak on August 26. The following day, Dr Ali Larijani, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, was quoted by the Islamic Students News Agency (ISNA) as saying that Iran would not abandon its right to enrich uranium as article 4 of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) allows it to do so.
After making a grand retreat from the deliberately contrived nuclear standoff with Iran that even its close allies had found distasteful, US officials still continue to behave as if everyone must snap to attention whenever they click their fingers. This was again seen on June 21, when US president Bush was in Vienna for talks with European rulers.
The West, led by the US and Britain, has worked itself into a lather over Iran's removal of seals from centrifuges at the Natanz nuclear facility to enrich uranium by turning it into a gas (uranium hexafluoride) as part of its civilian nuclear-research programme.
By taking a firm and principled stand over its right to enrich uranium under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Iran has forced the US to blink. The meeting on November 24 of the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna was a far more civilized affair than the bellicose threats issued by the same body two months earlier.
Iran won what may be regarded as a partial and temporary victory at the International Atomic Energy Commission (IAEA) on September 24, when the UN nuclear agency’s board refrained from acceding to American demands that it immediately refer Iran to the UN Security Council for alleged breaches of the nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty (NPT).
